Deadly Ex aka Inconceivable [Lifetime Movie Network]

REUNIONS AND REUNIONS

For a year and a half Valerie and Gary used to date and then things ended. Gary has since married and has two kids, both in high school. Valerie, however, has not moved on and apparently been pining for Gary since their break up.

Gary has a semi successful transportation business (it's in financial dire straights) and Valerie has a successful purse making business and I do mean successful.

Gary and Valerie meet up again at their high school reunion. I'm going to guess it's their third or fourth, it depends on how often their school has these reunions. Some schools, such as mine, did it every ten-twenty years. But I digress.

As mentioned, the two meet up again at the reunion and begin talking. Gary is complaining about his wife (big mistake) and Valerie is listening tentatively like there's going to be a big test on it later. later on during the reunion, Gary gets caught up in the moment and kisses Valerie (another mistake - this clown is full of mistakes). Valerie, on the other hand, took the kiss to mean something more.

Jess is Gary's wife and a Yoga instructor, who seems to have a successful business of her own. Valerie makes it a point to seek out Jess and semi-befriends her. As with any stalker/obsessed ex-girlfriend, she her motives are not pure. She was, in a sense, checking out the competition, and to her, as we learn later from her own salty lips, she had no competition.

I'M IN TOWN ON BUSINESS, LET ME STALK YOU

Valerie always claimed she was in town on business whenever she wanted to see Gary. Valerie was in town on business..the business of stalking, and fine job she was doing. This women found out everything about Gary, from where he lived to his business and his kids. The kids part came from a lunch her Gary had that Gary forgot to tell his wife about. I'll get to that in a bit.

ANYTHING YOU SAY AT THIS LUNCH MAY BE HELD AGAINST YOU

What Gary told Valerie at their reunion about his marriage she hung on to. What Gary told her about his kids, she hung on to and used it to her advantage.

During their lunch, which she initiated, of course, Gary begins talking about his kids. He tells her that his daughter is starring the school play Anthony and Cleopatra as Cleopatra. Oh Gary, why did you tell her this? I can't remember if he told when the play was or she found for her self (I'm guessing the latter since this woman is very resourceful) but she was completing two things from this lunch: get lipstick on Gary's collar and decided to send a gift to his daughter on the night of the play.

THE LIPSTICK STUNT

Towards the end of the lunch, Valerie excuses herself to the ladies room. While there she puts on a fresh coat of lipstick and then returns to the table. As they are getting ready to leave they give each other a hug and that's when Valerie presses her lips against his collar and neck, thus leaving the infamous lipstick on the collar in hopes he wife finds it. But her plan backfired - almost.

Gary goes back to work in which his business partner comes into his office to tell him something and notices the lipstick and tells Gary who doesn't know what to do now. When he gets home he pretends he has something in his eye and by passes everyone to get up stairs so he can hide the shirt.

The next morning, Gary retrieves the shirt and puts it in his gym bag. Well, it looked like a gym bag. What Gary doesn't know is his wife saw him retrieve the shirt though she didn't say anything. Later on she calls the dry cleaning place they frequent to find out if he's brought a shirt in for cleaning and they say yes and proceed to tell her the lipstick on the collar won't be hard to get out. 

Jess (that's Gary's wife) calls Gary at work to confront him about the shirt. My question is why didn't she do this at home? Why interrupt his business/busy day. Perhaps because she knew he would lie about the shirt if confronted at home. By doing it her way, she was able to get the truth. Fine. Why not wait until he gets home to confront him? She's aware his business is about to go belly up so why interrupt him trying to find a way out for his business? Who knows. Welcome to Lifetime Movies.

CLEOPATRA HAS A PURSE

Remember when Gary told Valerie about his daughter's play? Well Valerie sent his daughter a $500 purse as a gift for her role. Of course this started a confrontation between Gary and Jess because its from Gary's ex and Jess didn't know they had lunch together (see, Gary had to tell Jess how Valerie knew about his daughter's play). There's also a dinner date that didn't end well either. There's so much that didn't end well in this movie, including the ending.

PICTURES?

Valerie had sent Gary nude pictures of herself through, what seems a social media site. Gary didn't delete the pictures and thus his son found them. The son has a big mouth and blurts it out in front of his mother and father. Another argument ensues between Jess and Gary which leads to Gary being thrown out of the house and into a hotel. Well, you guess where things went from here. Or can you?

LET'S END THINGS RIGHT HERE

I'm not going to give any more details of the movie, should you want to watch it. As if I haven't given enough already. Oy vey!

I enjoyed the movie myself, mostly due to Henstridge's performance. She's one of those actresses that keeps you glued to the screen. I remember seeing her in Species, which was a good movie on it's own, but she added to it. I think the acting by all was really good, save for the daughter when she was yelling towards the end of the movie. I seriously wanted drop kick her like nobody's business. 

The movie was realistic as far as you never know about people you used to date. You might think things ended well until one day at that class reunion. Beware of those class reunions and exes.

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Deadly Ex (original name Inconceivable)

Cast: Valerie: Natasha Henstridge (Species, Cold Spring , Gary: Jason Gerhardtand (CSI, Mistresses, General Hospital), Jess: Marguerite Moreau (Queen of the Damned, Runaway Jury, Gray's Anatomy)

Release Date: 1 October 2016

Production Company: Creative Arts Entertainment Group, Inc.

Writers: Christine Conradt, Chris Lancey

Where to Watch: I usually like to put places to watch the movie but I couldn't find any. But I'm sure you creative people will find a way.

Lifetime Movie: Cold Spring (Contains Spoilers)

The Plot: After losing her baby when she’s hit by a car, a couple decides to move to Cold Spring in hopes of a new start.

The Players:
Roy: Sean Patrick Flanery (Powder, The Boondock Saints, Suicide Kings)
Sarah: Natasha Henstridge (Species)
Diane: Jennifer Gibson: (Maps to the Stars)

What Happened: Roy (Flanery) is a lawyer who is stepping out on his wife with Diane. While moving into a house with the help of Diane, Roy gets a phone call from his wife Diane (Henstridge). She tells him that she’s on her way home and would like for them to have lunch together. Roy hears an ambulance in the background but also in real time which causes him to believe his wife is closer than he thinks and his fears are confirmed when he looks out the window and see’s his wife across the street walking towards the house. He tries to divert her from the house by asking her to get a table at a nearby restaurant and he will be there shortly to which she agrees. Just as they are to hang up from each other he hears her scream and fall into traffic and get hit by car. Fast forward a few weeks later we learn that she has lost the baby. A doctor doing a home visit prescribes her medication and tells her that in time she will get over the lost.

I can’t remember how it came about but Roy is advised to move him and his wife from New York to Cold Spring, a very small town in which Sarah can get the peace and quiet she needs and it will be a great place for them to start their lives over again. Roy wants to move there to get away from Diane as well who won’t leave him alone. Since the accident Roy has become more attentive to his wife and does not want to have anything to do with Diane.

During their time in Cold Spring Sarah is having dreams of a four year old boy as well as of being killed or attempted murder on herself, while Roy thinks he’s seeing Diane about town. Each instances is not really happening.

What’s REALLY Happening: The boy Sarah is dreaming about belongs to Diane (whom was killed by Sarah but not on purpose*). The boy is not Roy’s but a child Diane had with her former boyfriend who was abusive to both Diane and the boy. The boyfriend beat the boy so bad he put him in a coma. Roy is not aware that his former girlfriend is dead until the end of the movie when the boyfriend takes Sarah hostage and lures Roy to the hide out so he can witness the boyfriend kill Sarah. It’s Diane’s boyfriend how pushed Sarah into traffic in hopes of killing her but since that didn’t happen he decided to kidnap her with the goal of killing her.

*Diane arrived at Roy’s house (when they lived in New York) and encounters his wife. She (Diane) tries to play off by saying she has the wrong place and as she’s leaving Sarah tells her not to ever come back. Diane somehow ends up in the house (I never understood how that happened) and as Sarah is running upstairs, Diane follows her and that’s when Sarah pushed Diane while telling her to get out of her house. Diane hits her head against the banister and dies. Sarah moves Diane’s body to an alley to look like she got mugged while burying her purse in a field or her backyard.

The Good: The plot and story-line was a good one. I enjoyed the mystery behind the strange dreams Sarah was having and the meaning behind the boy she kept seeing in her dreams.

The Bad: The chemistry between Flanery and Henstridge was not there at all. I really don’t think Henstridge was feeling the roll as Flanery was while Flanery’s acting was sub-par. His best work was in Powder (1995) and The Boondock Saints. The interaction between the two seemed forced and took away from the movie a bit. I got the feeling that Henstridge didn’t want Flanery near her and seemed annoyed by him. Flanery seemed to try to hard and possibly at times was over thinking his acting and movements.

The detective (who’s name I don’t remember and he’s not listed in the cast credits on imdb.com) was absolutely horrible. He used the vocal fry tone when talking which is so damn annoying. I’m not sure if he thought it sounded cool or what. And if he thought it sounded cool, like he was a hip detective, I wonder where he got the idea from.

Here’s a video about Vocal Fry

The boyfriend was just as bad as the detective in his attempt to act and sound threatening. He over emphasized his threats to Sarah and the looks on his face (which were meant to be mean looks) were of a joke. The look of fear on Henstridge’s face I think were more towards her fear of having to deal with this no-acting ass clown than the threats he was supposed to be giving her. The speech he was giving Sarah was something along the lines of leading a lamb to slaughter with Sarah being the lamb. Oy vey.

At the building where Sarah is being held, the cops see Roy through a window yet it took them almost 10 minutes to get to him. This threw me for a loop and had me lose a little bit of what was going on because I was trying to come up with excuses on why it was taking the cops so long to get inside and rescue Roy and his wife. Obviously the delay so more dramatic interactions between Roy, the boyfriend and Sarah could be played out, but they could have done this by switching between the scenes going on inside the building and the cops racing to get there. Oy vey once again.

The Ugly: There really isn’t any ugly to this movie. As mentioned it had a good story line and plot, but the chemistry between Flanery and Henstridge just wasn’t there and it was quite obvious. Sometimes, bad chemistry between actors can take away from the movie and cause the viewer to lose interest. I stayed because I wanted to know the meaning of Sarah’s dreams as well as get answers to a myriad of other things going on. I was getting a bit nervous that this was all going to be a supernatural thing, but it wasn’t. Whew!

Trivia: The house in the movie is the same house used in Cold Creek Manor (I shrugged my shoulders because I’ve seen nor heard of Cold Creek Manor).

As with most movies, towns are made up. But in this case there really is a Cold Spring, NY:

“The historic Village of Cold Spring is a small community in southeastern New York that is situated on the east bank of the Hudson River only fifty miles north of Manhattan.  It is one of two incorporated Villages within the Town of Philipstown in Putnam County. The Village occupies 0.6 square miles across the river from the United States Military Academy at West Point in the most scenic region of the Hudson Highlands” (read more here-> Cold Spring, NY)

Cold Spring
2013
Director: Sheldon Wilson –
Writer: Irvin Belateche
Starring (probably with regret): Natasha Henstridge, Sean Patrick Flanery
Drama, Mystery, Suspense
Currently showing on the Lifetime Movie Club app available for download in the Google Play store or App Store.